Examining participation

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) seeks to promote and regulate the negotiation of social change. Although many methods claim to be participatory, empirical evidence to support them is lacking. Few comprehensive criteria exist to describe and evaluate participation as experienced by stakeholders. There is a need for rigorous research tools to study, validate and improve PD practice. This paper presents the development and initial testing of PartE (Participation Evaluation), an interdisciplinary and intercommunity approach to studying and supporting participation in PD. Semi-structured interviews based on the framework showed it to be useful in: a) revealing differences in how stakeholders view participation and design, b) developing a personal frame of participation c) exploration of the future of participatory practices; and d) suggesting actions to resolve specific challenges or contradictions in participation at a broader level. The paper discusses the need to move away from considering PD as a practice claimed by designers towards a more open dialogue between all stakeholders to collective redefine "Participation and Design" for social change.

Examining Interdependencies and Constraints in Co-Creation

“…In light of the fact that facilitation is hard to do well [3,45] but also greatly impacts the outcomes of these engagements [9,12], there have been numerous calls for better accounting of the inherent messiness that transpires during participatory projects [7,29,36,39]. Further, recognizing the responsibility that comes from involving individuals in research projects [25,46], additional ethically-minded criteria have been proposed for evaluating the success of participatory outcomes, including: some accounting of what participants (and other stakeholders, researchers included) gain from the engagement [2,6,13,20,39]; and examination of the true extent of democratization of the design process [20,39,46].…”

Teaching (with) Empathy and Creativity in Design

“…Here the focus is shifted to questions of "useful to whom, useful for what? ", raising ethical doubts about the right of designers to target, interpret, immerse themselves, and tackle the affective state of others, even under the guise of good intentions however sincere (Gerrard & Sosa, 2014). Recently, a more sophisticated perspective of empathy challenges the utilitarian sense and transfers empathy from the designer's ability to design for others or to dictate the relationship or experience of others, and adopts relational aesthetics to denote the capacity to be with others while preserving otherness as a value for "a more collaborative, sustainable, and creative society" (Devecchi & Guerrini, 2017).…”

Mobile Gaming for Agonistic Design

“…(Björgvinsson et al, 2010, p. 48) In the presence of such controversies, design can be understood as a negotiation of social change between individuals, social contexts and design artefacts (Latour, 2005). Consequently, an important objective of participatory design is to promote the negotiation of social change for the production of critical alternatives rather than objects or products (Gerrard and Sosa, 2014).…”